Our graduate student from the Spring 2006 blog, "The Student Affairs Job Hunt," has been sharing her experiences for the past few years. She continues, now in her third year as a student affairs administrator, in Season 4 of "Learning to Fly."

Saturday, November 15, 2008

I'm back...

Wow, it's been a long time since I last posted something on this blog. I hadn't forgotten about this blog; I thought about writing something several times - even started a new post a couple times and then deleted it again. 'Why?' you may ask. Well, there's a couple reasons:1) Life has been insanely busy over the past few weeks. Between meeting with students for midterm interventions (if their midterm grades are low), preparing for the Tunnel of Oppression (which happened this past week) and just the regular day-to-day job stuff, I haven't had much time to breathe. It's been so bad that several times a week I would fall asleep on my couch when I was still trying to do work - with my laptop still in my lap.2) I also heard that someone on my staff knows about this blog. I don't really care much about other knowing about this blog - I rarely think about those who read this when I write; I'm really writing for myself, to get my thoughts "down on paper" (even though it's not paper but you know what I mean). I know there's people here at my current institution who know about this blog; and I'm okay with it. But knowing that someone is aware of it without knowing who it is has been driving me crazy. I wish I'd never been told that someone knows...because then I just hadn't thought about it. And if I didn't know, I wouldn't be worrying about it. But now I've been wondering about it, trying to figure out who it may be, staring at people during staff meetings trying to get to the bottom of it. It's the knowing-a-little-but-not-knowing-the-details that's driving me crazy. I'd rather either know nothing or everything...the in-between just isn't working for me.

Well, I've decided to get over myself and write again. The Tunnel of Oppression is also over; so now I may actually have the resemblance of a life again...hmm, maybe not since RA Evaluations and closing and all these other things are coming up and I'm way behind with everything because of the stress of the past few weeks.

If you've followed this blog, you may have noticed that in past years it was all about work but this year there's been some personal things mentioned - like my favorite band. ;) That has also been a change in my real life. In the past years, I was all about work. I didn't really have much of a personal life - I did when I was on vacation over winter break or the summer, but during the school year my main focus was work, work and work. This year, I've decided to take a little more time for myself - as I have decided every year so far - but I actually went through with it. And yes, it was this favorite band of mine that made it all happen. Now, I love their music and I'm glad I got to go to all these concerts this semester (8 this semester, 10 all together), but as much as I'm glad that I now have a resemblance of a personal life, it's also taken a toll on my work. I feel like I'm always behind with everything; I'm not doing as good of a job as I'd like to; I'm always distracted and stressed. I'm not really sure what to do about it. My supervisor tells me not to stop having a personal life but to give it time to get used to it. I don't really want to give up my personal life. But I'm also sick of feeling like I'm not doing a good job, of being even more stressed, of going away for a weekend and having a great time but then regretting it later when I'm back at work and there's just not enough time to get everything done.

My new "personal life" has also taken me away from campus a lot, which hasn't really helped with making connections with colleagues. After Tunnel, the committee members were going to BW3 for some food and drinks - and even though I had sent out an e-mail a couple days before saying, "If anyone wants to do something after Tunnel, let me know," and I hadn't said anything to the contrary that night, everyone just assumed that I wouldn't be coming with them. WHY??? I know I haven't been able to make it to many of the social events that people have planned - but what can I do if they either plan it on a Wednesday night when I'm at NRHH meetings or a Thursday night during advising season when I advise until 10 pm or on a weekend when I'm away. Whenever I could go, I've gone...there just haven't been that many chances.

Part of me wants to try and reach out to people - try and make some conections. Part of me just wants to hide from everyone, spend my free time either following around my favorite band wtih my partner-in-crime (one of my RAs who also loves the band) or reading a good book. And I'm the first to admit that I've taken this obsession with my favorite band a little far (I rarely listen to other music, check their Web site every day, talk about them constantly) and I realize that some people will make fun of that, but lately, those comments have gotten rather hurtful. Just one more reason to hide from the rest of the world....

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

Hi there! Don't give up on your personal life - you will see it's worth it!!! There will be times coming up when you feel great after your weekend - the job seems so much easier with you being layed back because of your great weekend experiences and you start Monday with a song in your head that makes you happy - floating through the day with a smile on your lips. This happened to me, when I started to have a personal life again. My favourite hobby lets me take the stress during the week much easier and I don't let the things people say hurt me anymore, because I have this favourite hobby/obsession of mine that lets everything seem not so bad after all during the week.

Everybody feels lonely sometimes. But don't give up on smiling and saying nice things to people. It works! For example I let a coworker know how great she is doing and how much I see her commitment in everything she does - she smiled back and it saved both our days!

Don't stop telling people that you are interested in social events and that it hurted not being invited last time. The time will come when things have changed and they start to invite you again. You could also ask your coworkers if there is something planned for the evening before you say goodbye to them. So you could find out about after-work-activities. Don't be too proud to go just when you were invited - maybe they just forgot because you haven't been there too often lately.

A good thing someone told me once is: Try to say "thank you" more often than "please". Before falling asleep think about what things you are thankful about today. Because being thankful is the more heart-warming feeling than thinking about everything you don't have and you are eager to get.